Story Behind the Song: Jon Pardi, ‘Heartache on the Dance Floor’

"Heartache on the Dance Floor" was Jon Pardi's third single -- and third No. 1 hit -- from his sophomore album, California Sunrise. The song, written by Pardi along with Brice Long and Bart Butler, is an uptempo, feel-good tune about a woman whom the song's narrator meets at a beachside bar. Although he never gets to know her name, or really anything about her, "Heartache on the Dance Floor" is hardly sad-sounding song its title suggests.

Below, Long shares the story behind "Heartache on a Dance Floor" with The Boot.

We wrote that song somewhere around Wichita, Kan., me and Bart and Jon.

Jon came on the bus -- we met him at a show in Wichita, and he came on the bus -- and just started singing “Where’s she at / Where’s she at / Where’s she at tonight?” He had that kind of thing going. I looked at Bart, who produces Jon, and I said, “Buddy, if we don’t mess this thing up, we’ve got a hit here.”

So, the next morning, we started writing on it. [We] got it written in one day, and we wrote “All-Time High,” which is on the record, too; so we wrote both those songs in the same day.

It was a lot of fun. Like I said, Jon came on and started singing that kind of thing, and we kind of went with a story behind him seeing a girl out in California -- him being from California -- and the rest kind of falls in place, but that’s pretty much how it started.